Testimonials and Stories

“Family Hui helped me gain a support group. I learned new ways in dealing with stress and how to be a supportive parent in education, personally, and emotionally. I spend more quality time with my family.” -Rosalba

“I loved the trainings provided to us as the leaders. I learned a lot during the program but what I liked the most was the ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) PowerPoint and talk… Furthermore, I learned more about nutrition, my children’s development, and school readiness that I have shared with my husband so we can both work on strengthening our family.” -Maria

“The Family Hui program has helped me in gaining a support group… Since the program I have learned new ways of playing with my kids and family as a whole, new methods that I can put into practice for helping my children’s development, and new ways of disciplining my children mindfully.” -Gaby

“More than anything, that’s what [Family Hui] is – you’re raising your kids with the support of others, not just all by yourself.” -Lupe

“La Familia Hui es un grupo de personas que fortalece toda la familia. ” -Maribel

Muzhgan’s Story

I am Muzhgan Fakhri, from Afghanistan and came to USA on Oct, 2016 with my family. I have three kids, two son and one daughter, 7,6 and 2 years old. I came from a land that women have to fight for their rights, if a woman wants to study, she has to fight with the society to reach her goals. I came from a country that being born as a girl is not good news for her parents, from the beginning of her life she should prove herself to her family and society. As a girl when i born my father had the same feeling as most of other parents in my home country, he wish that I was a boy and bring some brightness to his house because having a girl make the parents worried about their unknown future, it is not my father’s fault that wish for a boy because he afraid of my unknown future, but regardless of my father’s wish I was a girl and according to my mothers speech he was upset for three days. I have to add that my father love me more than my other sibling, he is so kind and both my mother and father put all their efforts to raise as educated and positive human in the society.

I started my school at 6 years old and was in second grade that one of other dark page of history was turn to my country and the darkness was most affected on women and girls. It was Taliban Regime that took control of Afghanistan government and during their five years of government school was closed for girls and women did not had the right of education and work, they had to stay at home, do house chores and take care of their kids and family, and it was the most bad time of my life because i loved studying i loved to go school with my brothers, when my parents feel how i am interested in education they sent me to another province of Afghanistan which was my uncle house and the Narway government had a hidden girls school project on that area. I continued my school up to grade 6 on that school and came back to Kabul, hopefully after six month of my return from my uncle’s house Taliban Regime was gone and the new Afghanistan government start working. It was a good news for every women and girls that they had the right of work and education. I should mention to you that during Taliban Regime and after that beside my education I was a work child that started working as a carpet weaving on 7 years old and I supported my family during financial hardship of our life. I weaved more than 100 of carpets with my small brothers since I graduated from university. When I graduated from high school, I had to pass a hard Kankor Exam for university acceptance and hopefully i pass the exam and succeed in one of my first choice and one of my dream field LAW! I was so happy and my family couldn’t believe that i was accepted in law and political science faculty. I graduated from university with all of its difficulty and hardships.

After graduation from Law and Political Science faculty I worked with different National and International organizations. I started as a fellow in one of organization that support victim of domestic violence women, then for three years I worked as an attorney and women activist for women’s rights and defend from their rights in Police Department, Attorney Office and court. since 2014 until Oct, 2016 I worked as a legal advisor of Victim Witness Assistance Program (VWAP) in Justice Sector Support Program (JSSP). As it was obvious that JSSP works in coordination with Ministries, Supreme Court and Attorney General Office. I had the honor of working for JSSP as a legal advisor and work with both the Ministry of Women Affairs and the Attorney General Office. My main responsibility was to provide legal advice to the VWAP workers of MOWA and prosecutors of AGO in the violence cases and I am pleased to work with and represent the US government in order to serve my home country. It is mentionable that cooperating with USA government in traditional society like Afghanistan to ensure women’s rights was not free of threats because people of such society have a negative idea about women who work outside of the house come to know that they are working with foreigners (USA government).

Therefore i decided to leave my homeland and came to USA on Oct, 2016 with my family. As you know that being a refugee has it is own difficulties, new country, new people, new culture, new language… and etc make you feel that am i take a right decision? Can i merge to this society? Can i find my way and thousand of other questions that came to my mind. Then i thought it is not right to set and just think, if you want to do something positive you have to move, Hopefully i passed this period successfully and merge to the society find new friends. I started work as a translator for afghan women refugees in one of Elimination of Violence against Women Organization, meanwhile i took my home daycare license and opened my home daycare in 2017. During this time somebody that up to now i don’t know who was that person that add me to an online afghan women chat room. In this group we all discuss about our lives, how to cook? How to home treat our sick kids? And some other women related topics. One day all of us discussed about our jobs and what are we doing since coming to USA. everyone describe their job and Arezo as well, then the program that Arezo described for me was interesting and i told her that i like her job and i wish this program ran in San Diego. She told me that i will discuss with my director regarding your suggestion, two days later Arezo put a text on the group for me and told me that our director wants to meet you and if it is possible she wants to start the program in San Diego. And it was the first step that i start working as a Family Hui Leader in Lead4tomrrow Organization. I meet Mrs. Lucy and create my first Afghan women family hui group, after conducting of some Family Hui Groups, Mrs. Lucy introduce me as a family hui coordinator in san diego. From April, 2018 up to now we had more than nine family hui groups and about more than 50 women benefited from this program. It is an effective program for afghan women refugees in San Diego that has a positive impact in their life.

Some of the positive points that all of them always mention is this:

With Family Hui Program, we understand that as a woman we have value and we should take care of our self in first step in order to be a good mom for our kids and family.
Family Hui Program help us to train our kids in positive and peaceful way.
Family Hui Program help us to find and make friends for us in our community and connect us with other families.
Family Hui Program help me to face with life challenges and think positive.
By attending to this program I feel fresh and most of my depression is gone during this time.
After taking the Family Hui Classes, my behavior change and become well with my kids and husband, and i try my best to have a positive reaction to their challenging behaviors.
The Program was really good and suitable for me, when I really need it and was alone, now I have more than one friend.
We all appreciate if this program has more training with different topics for us in the future. Like if we have this program by the topic of legal awareness in inform the refugee women about their rights and their kids rights, so they can merge to society with knowledge and know what is their right and what responsibility they have regarding their kids.

Martha’s Story

My name is Martha. I work for Family Hui as a Program Coordinator for families with children ages 0-5. I love my job because every day I supervise group leaders and work very closely with parents who are learning and using new positive parenting techniques. Personally, Family Hui has helped me develop better techniques on how to deal with stress and I have developed more empathy not only for myself, but for other parents as well.

Since I started working with Family Hui as a Program Coordinator I have started to value myself, my family, and the families that I work with on a daily basis because parenting is not an easy job and we cannot give up even though we might face obstacles or barriers.

Through Family Hui, I’ve learned and helped others to learn the impact Adverse Childhood Experiences can have on us as parents, but most important the negative impact that this adverse Childhood traumas can have on our children if we do not put an end to this negative childhood traumas. As a result l, I have adopted new positive parenting techniques that have led to a more positive mental and physical state.

When I started in the Family Hui Program as a participant, and then took the role of a leader, I started seeing parenting differently. Furthermore, being involved in the program not only helped me and my children emotionally, but most importantly it helped my husband learn that physical discipline was not the right way to raise our children and that there were other ways of raising our children positively. My husband did not attend the program, but it became a habit for me to come home and share with him new ideas on how we can raise our children positively. Now, as time has passed we are proud and joyful of ourselves as parents because we have noticed that our children have developed confidence, respect, positive values, compassion, and most important empathy towards us and with everyone they meet.

I was born and raised in Mexico and came to the United States when I was ten years old. Most of the time while I lived in Mexico I was just with my mom since my dad was in California most of the year. We did not have a father figure present most of the time so it was really hard to adapt to my Dad’s rules when he came home. He was a strict macho figure in the family. At times, I felt frightened by him because in our culture there is a stereotype that women have to obey the male figure and that we could not do anything out of the house chores.

This machismo continued months after I got married because my husband would not want me to work or go to school. He had the same mindset as my father that women had to stay home and obey the men. Little by little I started to talk to my husband and he started to be more comprehensive and opened minded with me. He allowed me to continue my college education and was a motivation while I went to college because he did not get the opportunity to go to school. My husband’s trust pushed me to thrive harder in school to show him that we as women have the potential to succeed outside of a four-wall home. As a result of my hard work, I received my bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice with a focus on Corrections.

When we both talked about our childhoods and how we were both raised we both came to an agreement that if God gave us the fortune of being parents we did not want to raise our children the same way our parents did, but we could not figure out how to break those negative parenting habits. Soon enough we were expecting our first child and we knew it was going to be a wonderful experience. When our baby was born and started growing up we did not feel like we were raising him the proper way because of all the different challenges and traumas that we ourselves had gone through in our childhoods. I would take our son to story time, the park, but at that time I was still going to college so I did not give him all the quality time he needed and it was just really stressful since my husband did not helped me as much as we had planned because he worked long shifts and would come home really late and tired. I started to get strep out because of school, house chores, baby, and husband but thanks to my mother and sisters I made it. My son was two years old when I had another baby. I would take both of my babies to story time at the Rise office in Winters and that is how I found out about Family Hui and was a life-changing program for me.

Personally, Family Hui has helped me to value myself as a women, mother, wife, and leader. Thanks to Family Hui, I realized that I am worth more than other people made me feel and that I had to put an end to negative cycle of machismo by starting to work. I also value myself as a mother by realizing that all the hard work and dedication I am making to raise my children will pay off sooner or later.

My husband and I have a six-year-old boy named Ricardo, a four-year-old girl named Alexa, and a month and a half baby girl named Yaritza.

Now, I have come to learn that we cannot change the whole world in one day, but we can change the way one person sees the world. At the end of each Hui I feel so grateful and happy when I have families coming to me and telling me “ thank you for bringing this trauma- informed parenting program into our community and changing lives.”

I may be only one person but I am also now one of many parents focused on creating caring families and communities of support.